Thursday, December 31, 2015

There’s something to be said for walking long distances. At
some time in every Long Walk I’ve taken I discover that I have traveled a lot
further than I had anticipated and time has evaporated. Also, when I discover
this lapse in time and distance I realize that no matter what happens I am only
halfway done, at most. But usually I keep going. If I walk long enough and far
enough there is a certain clarity of the moment that will come to me. And there
are characters in stories that must either live or die and walking helps me
determine their fates.

I’m writing a short story about a woman who decides to kill
one of her coworkers who lives in the same building as she does. He’s not a
mean person, and he doesn’t flirt with her, and he’s not evil or bad at all.
She just decides that she is going to kill him. No real good reason.

The more she thinks about it the more the idea fascinates
her. She knows better than to use her computer to look up ways to kill someone
so she watches detective shows on television and makes notes on how people get
caught. She begins to realize that no murder is perfect, in fact, no crime is
perfect, but if done right and done well, she feel like she can get away with
it. It’s a challenge to pit herself against an entire police force and it’s not
enough to kill someone, no, she has to make sure that the police know the
person was murdered and they have to know they’ve been outsmarted.

This women begins to feel a sense of purpose in her life
that she never has felt before. She stalks the man, listening to conversations
that he has with others, learning everything she can about what he does and
where he goes. Her apartment is upstairs from his and she can see the light
from his bedroom reflected in the window of a building across the street. She
knows what time he turns the light on and off. She discovers he eats carry out
pizza every Saturday night so she knows when the pizza guy is showing up for
his delivery. She careful to keep only paper notes and she never uses his real
name. She know the best time to kill him would be right after the pizza guy
leaves and the best time of year would be winter, so it would be cold.

I look up and realize that another mile or so has passed.
The sun is a little warmer than it has been and I’ve noticed there are a lot
more Asians on the beach than I remember seeing before. Of course, the
demographic in America is changing very rapidly and the influx of people from
all parts of the world is crafting new cultural norms. I wonder if I should
make the victim Asian. But no, that would make our killer seem as if she might
be racist, and I want her to be a pure psychopath.

So she decides that she will watch this man for an entire
year. What does he do on vacation? Where does his family live? She discover he
has an ex-wife that stole a lot of money from him. She smiles. There’s someone
out there who hates him and could be blamed for the murder. Our killer smiles.
The plot begins to take shape. She will kill him the day before Thanksgiving.
She has heard him talk about taking that time off to go birdwatching in Mexico.
He is going alone and won’t be back for a week. That means he won’t be missed
for ten days, maybe even two weeks. The trail will be very cold and she plans
to leave the window open in his apartment as to keep the body from smelling.
But how to kill him?

She knows better than to buy any sort of weapon and she only
used a gun once or twice in her life. Poison pizza? No, that’s not a sure way
at all and she would have to buy poison. Push him out of a window? She stops
and thinks, but no, too risky. She watches and waits and wonders. But just in
case things get physical she starts working out like a fiend.

I stop and stock of where I am. I have to turn back now or
risk falling off the edge of the earth. I wonder if there’s a way to plot a
murder where there is no doubt there has been a murder but at the same time,
something that hasn’t been done before. Then again, things that have been done
before have been done because they work.

I stoop down to pick up a seashell and discover it’s a piece
of plastic of some sort. Suddenly, our killer finds a box cutter while jogging.
It’s a gift from the Gods of Murder, a sign she ought to fulfil her plan and
she knows that she has to practice with it before she kills.

The box cutter is one of those that have a screw holding the
two halves together with spare blades hidden in between. She buys cheap pillows
and slashes them to pieces while wondering what it will feel like to kill.

A month before the date she rids her apartment of all the
evidence of the pillows and tears up all her notes. She’s careful to get rid of
everything that connects her to the crime and she very carefully goes through
the stages of her plan. It is time.

I’m nearly back at the hotel but I walk past it. The story
has occupied my mind. There’s a need for a twist, some weirdness that occurs
that both surprises the reader and completes the tale. We have what we need
here; a weapon, a date, good planning, yet there needs to be more. Should the
ghost of the murdered man come back to haunt her? That would be unexpected.

Friday, December 25, 2015

It’s an strange thing, time is. I haven’t been down to this
part of Florida since the late 90’s and even thinking about that passage of
time is odd. But since that point Destin has really built itself into a
continuous tumor of resort hotels and strip malls, tourist attractions and
convenience stores. There’s hardly an inch of space where there’s room for a
palm tree to grow. The ocean itself is the last stand of undeveloped space and
I wonder how long it will before someone build a hotel in the water. You have
to see that coming one day, really, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been done
already.

It’s been foggy and cloud ridden since we arrived but at
least it’s warm. There’s a strong wind blowing off the Gulf Of Mexico and it’s
far too windy to walk on the beach as I wanted to do. I settle for haunting the
road that borders the beach and whoever developed this area knew that one day
the Gulf would reach up and take part of this road, and maybe part of the hotel
back into the sea where everything came from in the beginning. But the profits
made from an endless parade of people trying to escape their lives make the
gamble an acceptable risk. The vendors and owners of all the tourist attraction
live and breathe with the casino of the sea.

There’s a full moon hidden in the clouds above. I can see it
at odd times as the clouds march inland. Maybe it’s raining a hundred miles
away from this spot as all that moisture has to fall eventually or maybe it’s
building up for a flood. There is no one else in the damp darkness but me. Last
night’s beer is still with me. It’s three in the morning by Central Time but
I’m still on Eastern so it’s four. It doesn’t matter. It’s Christmas and that
means that everyone is sleeping in and there isn’t any place open for hours if
at all. There isn’t even a vehicle on the road anywhere. I am alone surrounded
by thousands of sleeping people.

The dampness of the air and the wind ought to bring a chill
to the air but there isn’t anything but a warm salty taste. I’m going to have a
difficult time convincing law enforcement I’m not drunk if I get spotted. I’m
staggering from the wind in the darkness of a predawn Christmas. Who in their
right mind would be out in this on Christmas Day? Hotel resorts and strip
malls. There’s very little else out here but shops and sand and the wind. Sidewalk
would be nice but no, there’s no room for the walking. It’s better if people
drive because they will get there faster. And if they walk they will not want
to carry anything they buy. Driving is better. They can put the stuff they
bought in the trunk. There has to be some souvenirs from the trip, some memento
look at and remember that we were once there in the dark and in the wind, full
moon and Christmas at the same time and some reminder that life can be
different if enough money is spent.

There has been literally twenty-five minutes of sunshine in
the Sunshine State in the last twenty-four hours. The balcony from which I
write this overlooks the Gulf and it is beautiful and I am half naked. There is
something to be said for the warmth here, even though it wasn’t cold when I
left Hickory Head. There is also something to be said about the sound of
pounding surf. The high winds that refuse to blow the fog completely away also
provides with some excellent background noise. There is also the smell of the
salt air, even in the fog, and there’s a cleanness about the ocean that lifts
the spirit and soothes the soul. I can
see why so many writers have sought out the sea as a Muse. This is a delicious
environment for the mind to feast upon. Even with the wet wind, and drippy fog,
the clammy feeling on all hard surfaces dewy with moisture, this is still a
magnificent place. This would be an easy addiction. There is a powerful draw to
having the vastness at arm’s length from the fingertips while they write. The
balcony is on the tenth floor and there are seagulls flying underneath me. How
can someone write something small when such greatness exists on the very air
that is being breathed? The wind pushes the waves, carries the gulls, and
surrounds everything like the breath of the planet. Even as I type this out on
the screen I can hear the raucous cry of a gull wheeling a few feet from where
I sit.

There is a child flying a kite on the beach and it looks to
be a few feet lower than my elevation. Yet the wind will not keep the craft in
the air. I think the capricious breeze is too strong, too unsteady, and the
child appears to be losing interest. There is a lot going on near the beach
with each wave having the potential of washing ashore the body of a dead pirate
or a massive whale. There are fragments of shells to examine and who knows what
else might be attached to that piece of driftwood? There’s a certain sense of
mystery involved with being here. The ocean may or may not offer some odd gift.
The rush of the waves churns and churns and churns and anything long lost may
once again see the light of day, maybe just briefly, and perhaps it will be
gone for another thousands years, or be back after the next wave pushes it
around.

It is time for me to
fold this device up and heed the call of the ocean. I must go walk on the beach
and discover something, nothing, everything, and all things. From the oceans we
came and back to the ocean we ought to go.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

In eleven days it
will all be over. Christmas 2015, which started back in late August, will
finally start winding down. It will take a few weeks for all the decorations to
be taken down and put away, and after months of the frenzy building to a
greater and greater point of obscenity, we will begin dreading next Christmas,
which will like start right after the 4th of July. I’m at a loss to
explain this to you, really. But I feel as if someone, somewhere, has to make a
stand against Christmas, and even if I am the lonely light in the darkness,
someone has to be.

I hate Christmas.

I fucking hate Christmas.

More than anything else it’s the waste. Each and every roll
of wrapping paper will wind up in a landfill after being used for one day.
Cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, blister packages, plastic bags, tape, bows,
ribbons, all of this stuff is landfill fodder and the day after Christmas
there’s trashcans everywhere filled to overflowing with cheap plastic shit from
China that will fester in the ground for
centries. Worse, infinitely worse, most of the things that came in that
packaging will soon follow. Christmas is capitalism’s yearly bowel movement.
Mostly it lands on us all. It hits some more than other, but it infects
everyone with the urge to do it all again next year.

The waste of food is as bad as the waste of paper, plastic,
and cheap shit from China. People gorge themselves during this time of year,
over and over again, stuffing themselves in an orgy of harmful food and
alcoholic drinks that ensures that the hangover that begins on December the 26th
lasts for months. The waste of money, the way people drain themselves trying to
buy presents, cannot be matched by any other event. People will bankrupt
themselves and their families trying to buy the next greatest Barbie or Star
Wars toys.

The thing that bothers me the most is we are teaching our
kids that all of this, the waste, the stress, the manic need for more, is a
religious celebration.

In Christ’s name we prey, Amen.

If you really want to know how bad all of this truly is then
all you have to do is speak with someone who works retail. Ask someone who
works in a store on Black Friday what people become when a television goes on
sell. Ask a clerk what people are like when they have to return something or
something isn’t exactly right or, heaven forbid, there’s some sort of problem
with a credit card. Consumers become vicious, inhumane, and cannibalistic. It’s
everyone for themselves at the Mall and all the generosity we can muster is
half a handful of change tossed into a red kettle. That’s it. Once we hit that
parking lot it’s life or death getting a space and there’s that grim
satisfaction of having a spot better than someone else, and you can brag about
it at the office. Meanwhile, think of the irony of a Wal Mart employee who isn’t
making enough to live off of yet has to face hundreds of people a day snarling
about having to wait in line to buy things the people bagging the items cannot
afford to buy. And for eight hours a day they have to face this.

For those of us in Dog Rescue we know what’s coming next.
Every natural disaster means people will flee their sanity and abandon their
pets. Christmas is no different. People don’t want to travel to grandma’s house
for the holidays so they’ll drop their ten year old Irish setter off at the
local shelter where it will be killed in three days because there’s eleventy
billion people doing the same goddam thing right now. People will simply leave
home with a dog chained to a tree and hope it’s still alive when they get back.
They’ll leave their pets outside so company won’t have to deal with the animals
and don’t worry they won’t freeze because they are wearing a fur coat. People
will pull up to animal shelters and just tie their dogs to whatever is outside
and leave. The people inside those shelter are watching mass murder in the name
of Christ’s birthday party. Those people are teaching their kids that love is expendable
and when an animal becomes inconvenient to the holidays it is perfectly
acceptable to drop it off in the middle of nowhere and never look back.

In Jesus’ name we slay. Amen.

I don’t want to hear about how this is such a great time for
everyone to get together and how you haven’t seen Uncle Charlie since last year
because it isn’t worth it. The damage that is done this time of year isn’t
outweighed by pretty lights or watching the same thing on television you did as
a child. The environment is getting raped, people are throwing their money away
for no good reason, we’re drinking and eating too much, and people are killing
their pets. This happens every year. This happens every damn year.

There isn’t a god. There is no Jesus. There isn’t some old
man in a bathrobe and a shepherd’s crook looing down over this mess and
promising to make it all better one day. No deity or god worth its weight in
lightning bolts would sit around and watch this sort of blasphemy in its name
and simply let it go. If there was a god there would be some sort of reckoning
by now if for no other reason than to keep some poor kid from waking up and
thinking he was bad and that’s why Santa skipped over his house and landed in
some rich kid’s yard with a bike. It’s obscene what we teach kids about
Christmas and it is a lie.

The whole thing is a lie. It’s a made up event to sell you
things you don’t want or need or enjoy and give things to other people you
cannot afford and give kids a sense of entitlement they haven’t earned or a
sense of worthlessness they do not deserve.

You want a war on Christmas? It started the second Black
Friday became something that was more important than the day before it was.

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Tyger Linn is more vocal than her sister, Lilith Magnolia,
and hardly a sound does her cousin, Greyson Charlotte utter, except in dire
need. Marco Ladakh seems to be a little mouthy at predictable times, but his is
noise to make a point, not actual words, like Tyger Linn uses.

Tyger Linn has a different bark depending on who she is
speaking to and why she is speaking. The Squirrel Bark is easily recognizable
for it’s the highest pitched and loudest. Tyger Linn has laid claim to dog head
high and below and the Squirrels know it. Never before has it been as dangerous
to be below the lowest limbs and Tyger Linn has brought a level of lethality to
the woods that the Squirrels have never seen before. Tyger Linn is deadly
serious about hunting.

Marco is trying to learn what he can from his little cousin
but he lacks the mobility or the ground speed. What he’s really missing is that
hair trigger sprit that Tyger has developed that flings her off the ground and
into action with flawless execution. A squirrel was just outside the backdoor
two days ago and as Tyger rocketed out of the door and down the steps in one
bound, the squirrel zigged when it should have zagged. There are no second
chances. There is no second place trophy. The other three dogs alerted at the
action but no one got near Tyger Linn when she was making the kill. I tried to
take a venomous snake from her and she looked at me as if I had just spoken
Adele lyrics in Latin while whistling through my nose. My smallest little girl
has a feral sense about her betimes. I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to like
it the way I do.

Tyger has a bark that alerts me that Greyson Charlotte is,
once again, on the bed, where it disconcerts Tyger Linn no end. This is three
of four short, sharp, barks, nothing serious, but really, get down from there.
Greyson would be allowed to stay on the bed, but she likes to get on the bed
and chew things. Shoes mostly.

Back when Bert was alive no human being and no other animal
got within sight distance of the house without Bert telling me, and everyone
else in the Area Code, about it. The dog had a hammer for a voice and wasn’t
afraid to use it. Now, someone can be on the porch before anyone here knows it.
I have no idea why this is. But I can tell when Tyger Linn is barking at a
person, too. She’s very loud at people and her barks are very fast. She also
positions herself as close as she can to one side of the action, flanking. Bert
was more of a full throttle head first brawler. Tyger Linn looks for an angle.

My Lilith Magnolia has finally come to believe that Tyger
Linn is here to stay. Lilith the Aloof has never bonded with anyone but Lucas,
the Beloved, and I don’t think she ever will again. I’m not sure it will ever
be the same for either of us. But she has accepted Tyger Linn as a packmate and
they do play, some.

So all of this was brought on by Tyger’s observation that my
computer bag and gym bag were on the sofa next to me. She sat there, looking at
the stuff, and looking at me, and suddenly, here comes Lilith, who would
normally get up on the loveseat next to Tyger Linn. Well, instead of curling up
and leaving room for her sister, Tyger plops down and stretches out as long as
she can, and looks at Lilith as if to say, “I was here first, so there” and
Lilith looked a little putout that she had no place to lay.

I moved the stuff on the sofa to one side and invited Lilith
up, and she accepted and curled up next to me. That’s the one thing I can say
about Lilith; she is the most polite dog I have ever met. She would never get
up next to me without me asking her to and she would never do something like
block Tyger Linn. And of course, once Tyger Linn realizes that Lilith is going
to cozy up to me she stand up, cocks her ears and barks. Once, high pitched,
shrill, and in a word says, “Bitch!” but that’s all. Tyger Linn, for all of her
hunting skills, isn’t going to go head on with Lilith and we all know this to
be true.

It’s been a year now. Last year on this day I went down to
Dr. Harrell’s office and picked up a little brindle pit as a foster but I knew
the first time I saw her I was going to keep her. It has not be easy. Tyger bit
me the first week she was here and she meant it, too. She’s clashed with Lilith
but not seriously, but she did clash with Sam when he was alive. She never
really took a shot at Lucas, I mean, really, but she never got along well with
Tanya Rose.

All in all, Tyger Linn has been a hell of a lot of trouble
for such a small little girl dog.

So begins the second year of Tyger Linn Firesmith. There
isn’t a way to describe how it feels to have lost so many dogs in one year, Sam
to old age, Lucas to sudden illness, and Tanya to her madness. I never
envisioned inheriting my sister’s dogs in the manner I did, but that’s what
family is for, those unexpected times when you get more dogs. Tyger Linn has
survived being bitten by a venomous snake and that’s something only Lucas the
Beloved has done out here at Hickory Head.

I want to thank Michelle down at the Lowndes County Shelter
for posting that photo a year ago today. It changed my life and it saved Tyger
Linn’s.

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About Me

The Non Disclaimer

My writing reflects the things I see, think, and experience, and those things in my past that have led me to be me. It is not always pretty, it is not always funny, and no one has ever made mention of my life as a Disney Movie. If sex, drugs, profanity, or a general irreverence for all things religious somehow offends you, well, there are other blogs which will satisfy your need for self assurance.